It's supposed to hurt.

Olivia Engel, 6

Charlotte Bacon, 6

Daniel Barden, 7

Josephine Gay, 7

Dylan Hockley, 6

Ana M. Marquez-Greene, 6

Madeleine F. Hsu, 6

Chase Kowalski, 7

Catherine V. Hubbard, 6

Jesse Lewis, 6

Grace McDonnell, 7

James Mattioli, 6

Emilie Parker, 6

Noah Pozner, 6

Jack Pinto, 6

Aviele Richman, 6

Jessica Rekos, 6

Caroline Previdi, 6

Benjamin Wheeler, 6

Allison N. Wyatt, 6

Nancy Lanza, 52

Anne Marie Murphy, 52

Rachel D'Avino, 29

Dawn Hochsprung, 47

Victoria Soto, 27

Mary Sherlach, 56

Lauren Rousseau, 30

We spend a lot of time trying to stop hurting in our lifetimes.  Our friends yell at us, and we try to stop hurting.  We get rejected from our preferred colleges, and we try to stop hurting.  Our dogs die, and we try to stop hurting.  Our country is attacked by terrorists, and we try to stop hurting.  People storm into our schools, shooting our children, and we try to stop hurting.  But I'm writing to say that I think we're wrong.  I think it's supposed to hurt and never stop hurting.

The pain is how we know that we're still human.  The pain is how we know that these people mattered.  The pain is not something we should convince ourselves to get over.  We shouldn't desensitize ourselves to these things.  They should cut us to the core each and every time.

I've been watching the TV show "Everwood" lately, and I think that the character Ephram explains this concept the best:

"You know, after my mom died, everybody told me that I was gonna be OK.  That it would take a little time, but I would heal. Well, that didn't ever happen; not really anyway… What you’re feeling right now, Amy, it doesn't ever really go away — not completely. It’s not like, ya know, you’re gonna go back to being the person you were before they died — the person’s gone. It’s more like something inside of you breaks and your body finds a way to compensate for it. Like if you busted your right hand, you figure out how to use the left one. And sure, you might resist for a while because you’re pissed off that you have to learn all this stuff again that nobody else does. Eventually your body takes over and figures it out for you. And you’re glad. Because if it was up to you… you’d look at your broken hand forever and try to figure out what it was like before."

A broken hand, should hurt.  This terribly tragic loss should hurt, and there shouldn't be any shame in that.  We should mourn and grieve, and then we should take measures to prevent this from happening again.  If you destroy your right hand punching a wall, you're not going to turn around and do that with your left; you'll take preventative action.  We can't afford to keep punching the wall  We must come up with protective measures for our children.

Please visit People's website for stories on each of the victims.  Please hurt and grieve over them.  Please cry until you can't anymore.  Then please decide on the best plan of action to stop this from happening again and contact your congress representatives and senators about it.  If all we do is sit back and mull over the atrocity this depraved man committed, we're only opening the door for someone else to follow in his footsteps.  We must take action.  We must speak out.  We must not let these children die in vain.